


You Either Die an Agent...

by notoneforreality



Series: QB-B3 007 Fest 2020 [16]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: 007 Fest, 007 Fest 2020, Bond deserves this, Bond is M, MI6 after Agent Bond, Nomi is definitely enjoying this, Prompt Fill, Q is enjoying this, Retirement, Team Q Branch, he is aware, is not what he expected it to be, new Double-oh agents, the bulldog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25098025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notoneforreality/pseuds/notoneforreality
Summary: ...Or live long enough to see yourself become M.James Bond has retired from active duty. He still has to deal with the nonsense that happens out in the field, and the new Double-oh Seven is a chip off the old block.
Relationships: James Bond & Nomi, James Bond & Q
Series: QB-B3 007 Fest 2020 [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1795726
Comments: 4
Kudos: 76





	You Either Die an Agent...

**Author's Note:**

> Written for--  
> This prompt from the 2019 anon list: A fic in which Bond already is or becomes M. Karmic justice ensues when he has to deal with agents exactly like him.

“I need you to build me a time machine,” James tells Q the moment he steps into the office.

It’s a nice office, with a broad, solid wood desk. There’s a comfortable, fancy leather desk chair behind the desk, and two less comfortable leather chairs in front of the desk for reasons that involved Mallory wanting to make people who entered his office suffer, and James not bothering to ever redecorate. The only things James has ever changed is the contents of the shelves (Mallory had taken all his personal belongings, and James had restocked with all the books he’d ever read on planes and in airports and hotel lobbies, as well as the bloody bulldog figurine), and the picture hung between the windows. 

Now, instead of Mallory’s armada, there hung a copy of the Fighting Temeraire that Q had bought as a promotion gift, because he thinks he’s funny.

The main issue with the office was that James had never expected it to be his.

Q closes the door behind him and raises an eyebrow at James, unimpressed. Well, it had been worth a shot.

“Why the hell do you need a time machine?” He asks, sliding into one of the uncomfortable leather chairs (his left, his preferred seat, where he can angle himself so he’s watching James, the windows, and the door all at the same time).

“So I can go back in time and throttle myself.” James huffs and leans back in his chair. “I can’t understand why no one’s done it already.”

“Plenty of people have tried,” Q points out, a grin ticking at the corner of his mouth.

Okay, so that was a fair point, but…. “I mean anyone from inside MI6.” Someone who deserved an opportunity to try to kill him, after all his bullshit they’ve had to deal with.

Q opens his mouth and James scowls at him, already knowing what he’s going to say.

“Trevelyan doesn’t count; he’d already defected.”

Grinning outright, now, Q leans back in the chair. James remembers sitting in those chairs, and they were always about as comfortable as a cell, but Q manages to look completely content, one ankle crossed over his knee and laughing.

“So what’s the problem, today?” Q asks.

“Double-oh Five,” James says darkly, “disappeared for two weeks and has just turned up in Virginia, for some reason. She’s refusing medical attention, even though Hammond is on her comms and is pretty sure she’s got a broken rib at the very least.”

Q’s shoulders shake with silent laughter, and his lips are pressed together in a failed attempt to hide his smile. 

James scowls deeper. “Yes, yes, I know. This is why I want the time machine.”

“You know,” Q says conversationally, “I can never decide whether Mallory put you up for this because he thought you’d be good at dealing with the Double-ohs after being one, or whether he just thought it would be hilarious payback after everything you’ve done.”

Before he left, Mallory had said that it was the former. They'd had an oddly tender conversation about how he believed in James, and trusted him to take over control of the agency, and how James was actually a really good agent, and would be a really good M. 

He’d still ended up grinning and wishing James a fervent ‘good luck’ in a tone filled with delighted schadenfreude.

“I feel like I owe and apology to Mansfield, above anything,” James says.

Q waves his hand. “She was the same as you. I think she found her catharsis when Eve shot you, anyway.”

James hums. There are a few Double-ohs currently that he wouldn’t mind having shot. Not least among them the bastard Double-oh Eight, because there’s always one idiot who causes more problems than just frustration. When James was an agent, Double-oh Two was the issue; this time round, it's Double-oh Eight.

“Double-oh Five is back in contact?” Q asks, bringing the conversation back on topic.

“Yes. Hammond’s been running the Kite mission since she touched down in Kuala-Lumpur. He knows the brief, and he thinks Santen might be in the US going after one of the ring leaders of the faction.”

“Then she’ll be fine,” Q says. For a moment, he goes soft around the edges, and James relaxes, too. 

He’s been in this job five years now, but sometimes it helps to have someone on his side to remind him that he’s doing okay.

“Right,” James says. “Well, I’ll leave Hammond on that, then. He’s got a contact in Q-Branch?”

“Working with Constance Arbor,” Q says, immediately. “She’s good, will keep eyes on.”

“Good.” James leans back in his chair and glances across at the painting on the wall.  _ What do you see? A ship that survived and will be put to good use. _

“Eve said you have an appointment with Double-oh Seven at three,” Q says, nodding towards the clock on the bookshelf as he stands up. The hands point to just after three o’clock. 

James can’t smother his groan, which makes Q grin, again. The new Double-oh Seven was  _ definitely  _ his penance for everything he’d done with the role. She was entirely too like him for anyone’s good, and every interaction with her left him feeling very sorry for Mansfield.

“Fine, send her in if she’s waiting with Eve. I supposed I can survive it.”

“You’ve survived a large number of things that would have killed anyone else,” Q says, strolling across the office, “I’m sure you can survive one meeting with Rambeau.” Then, before James can make a retort, Q pulls the door open and beams into Eve’s office beyond it. “Agent Rambeau, M is ready for you, now.”

With that, he disappears off back to Q-Branch, and James is left with Agent Nomi Rambeau loitering in the doorway with her arms crossed, watching him.

He stands and raises an eyebrow. “You can come in. Take a seat.”

Rambeau sits, and James notes with some degree of satisfaction that it takes several seconds of fidgeting before she gives up trying to make herself comfortable.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” she asks, voice and face doing a very good impression of innocence that James knowns is utterly fake, because he’s got her latest mission reports in front of him.

He pulls the brown paper folder towards him and flips it over, running his eyes over the information he’s already memorised. Honestly, if he were still an agent, he’d be impressed by the contents of the file. As it is, he’s the one who has to deal with the mess, and also somehow the one who’s supposed to be professional and discipline anyone who causes problems.

That had been a concern, when he first got the promotion. There had still been people in the field who knew him as their colleague, as the most notorious and reckless agent in the Secret Service. Trying to discipline them for reckless and dangerous behaviour, or for not returning equipment had been a nightmare. He was lucky they respected him at least enough to not laugh in his face outright. In the office.

They saved that for the pub, later.

Agent Carter has been the last survivor of James’ coterie, and she’d retired from active duty at the end of the previous year, which left a full rank of people who didn’t know that James had been at least as bad as them, if not worse.

“You drove a stolen Dodge through a shopping centre,” James says, his voice flat. “Pursued by both your mark and the local police.”

Rambeau looks back at him, unrepentant.

James continues, “Upon crashing the car into a decorative fountain—”

“To avoid a civilian,” Rambeau points out, like that’s a mark in her favour, as though she hadn’t been the one to put the civilians in danger in the first place. James ignores her.

“—you then emptied your own weapon, before stealing a gun from the security guard of the centre and using that first as a firearm and then as a bludgeoning weapon.”

“I had to improvise,” Rambeau says.

“Following this confrontation with the mark, you told the police that you were escaping an abusive marriage with him, that the first gun was actually his, and your erratic behaviour was due to your heightened emotional state. That being: fear of him.”

“Improvise,” Rambeau repeats. There’s a glint of smug amusement in her eyes.

“After being remanded in custody, rather than using your call to MI6 for support, as is standard procedure, you instead broke out of the jail, hitched a lift to the mark’s residence, and blew up his mansion.”

“Okay, the explosion was planned,” Rambeau says. “I made sure he was very satisfied the night before and rigged the bottom floor while he was asleep. It didn’t even take any effort.”

James does not ask wether she’s referring to the explosive rig or the ‘satisfying’ the mark.

“You then contacted Mx Alex Turnball in Q-Branch for the sole purpose of asking them to book a first class return flight to the UK.” James closes the file and clasps his hands together. “And that,” he says, “is only going through the last day of your week long mission.”

If he wanted to go through the whole week, they’d be in the office for the rest of the day.

Rambeau shifts in the seat, a flash of discomfort flickering over her face. She gets it very quickly under control and smirks at him, impertinent. “All in the name of Queen and Country, sir,” she says. “You know how it is.”

He does know how it is. Double-oh Seven, sat opposite M, cocky and thrilled with how the incredibly unsanctioned methods of the mission had been successful.

“Do not,” James says, “make this reckless behaviour a habit. Stay in contact.”

“Yes, sir,” she says, brazen in the lie, her face meek for all her eyes flash with laughter.

James sighs. “Get out of my office.”

Now she’s grinning, too, as she flees the scene. He hears her chirp a goodbye to Eve before disappearing into the corridor beyond. 

M’s bloody Union Jack bulldog sits on the shelf right behind James. As much as he hates it, it belongs there, always watching over his shoulder.

He swivels his chair to face the bookshelves and looks up at it.

“I deserve this, don’t I,” he says.

It doesn’t say anything — it’s a porcelain statue — but for a moment James imagines he can hear her voice.

_ I did get one thing right. _

**Author's Note:**

> Keep notes:  
> \--did I just steal her surname from Captain Marvel? yes (side note: the first thing I ever saw Lashana Lynch in was an episode of Death in Paradise but I didn't realise this until after my third watch of Captain Marvel and probably seventeenth watch of the Death in Paradise volleyball episode)  
> \--re: the Dodge in the shopping centre - if you haven't watched Blues Brothers please do yourself a favour and do so at your earliest convenience it features amazing music, great car chases, and Carrie Fisher being a badass as usual  
> \--James did not anticipate this being his life's direction. Honestly he didn't quite anticipate having this long a life


End file.
